William Osler

"Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability."

"No human being is constituted to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and even the best of men must be content with fragments, with partial glimpses, never the full fruition."

"Observe, record, tabulate, communicate. Use your five senses. Learn to see, learn to hear, learn to feel, learn to smell, and know that by practice alone you can become expert."

"Soap and water and common sense are the best disinfectants."

"The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today's work superbly well."

"The teacher's life should have three periods, study until twenty-five, investigation until forty, profession until sixty, at which age I would have him retired on a double allowance."

"The value of experience is not in seeing much, but in seeing wisely."

"The very first step towards success in any occupation is to become interested in it."

"There are, in truth, no specialties in medicine, since to know fully many of the most important diseases a man must be familiar with their manifestations in many organs."

"To have striven, to have made the effort, to have been true to certain ideals - this alone is worth the struggle."

"To study the phenomena of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study books without patients is not to go to sea at all."

"We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from life."